Solano County prosecutors on Monday called the daughter of a woman who was brutally killed in 1996 to the witness stand to testify in the trial for the man charged with the killing.

In the lengthy jury trial for homicide suspect, Lonnie J. Kerley, 52, the focus has been on the relationship between him and his live-in girlfriend, Danna L. Dever, who was found dead on July 8, 1996, in a rural area near Highway 113 and Flannery Road. Her body would remain unidentified until 2007.

That was when detectives from the Fairfield Police Department made the death notification to Kerley and the daughter he shared with Dever, Mandee Kerley.

Jurors had already watched the lengthy video recorded interviews of Kerley speaking with police and explaining how Dever walked out on him and their daughter following an argument in the early morning hours of June 14, 1996, with nothing but her purse and the clothes on her back. Kerley reported Dever missing nearly two months after she reportedly walked out.

On Monday, Mandee Kerley testified about the events of the morning of June 14, 1996.

Mandee testified that she woke up to her parents arguing over money. Her grandparents were also at the home that morning, she testified.

"I believe that's when my mother said she was leaving," Mandee testified.

"She told me herself," she added.

However, when interviewed by police in 2007, Kerley told police that Dever left around 3:30 a.m. on June 14, 1996. He then called his parents to come over and woke Mandee up to tell her that her mother left.

Prosecutors have also focused on the violent nature of the relationship between Kerley and Dever, with numerous family members and neighbors testifying to their arguments and suspected injuries to Dever.

In support of that, prosecutors confronted Mandee with a journal she kept in 1996.

Deputy District Attorney Julie Underwood pointed to an entry from the journal in which Mandee wrote of coming home from a weekend with her grandparents and discovering a hole in a door. The entry goes on to describe a conversation between Mandee and her mother, in which she tells the young girl that Kerley choked her with a piece of exercise equipment.

"Although he was abusive to my mother, I think I understand it," Underwood read from the journal.

Mandee testified that she never saw any violence and clarified that entry to mean that they were only verbally abusive toward each other.

Prosecutors also indicated that new evidence had come to light over the holiday break.

Outside the presence of jurors, Deputy District Attorney Krishna Abrams said that investigators had spoken with a state prison inmate who was once housed next to Kerley in the Solano County Jail.

According to information relayed from the jailhouse informant to investigators, Kerley admitted in jail that he killed his girlfriend in their in-home tanning bed, and later chopped it up and took it to the dump, Abrams said.

Prosecutors believe that Kerley may have kept Dever in the tanning bed for some time, which could explain the advanced decomposed state of her body when it was found. Another prosecution theory is that she was crushed inside of it, as a forensic anthropologist previously testified that Dever suffered rib fractures.

Judge Allan P. Carter had previously ruled that testimony surrounding the tanning bed would not be allowed before the jury.

Kerley's defense counsel was granted a continuance in the trial to investigate the new evidence.

The trial is set to resume today with another recorded interview of Kerley to be played for jurors in Carter's Vallejo courtroom. Following that, the case is set to resume again on Monday.

Kerley has pleaded not guilty and remains in Solano County Jail custody.